Earth economics studies the economy of our planet from the perspective of an autarkic system (a “closed economy”). It ignores the constituent national and regional parts of the planet economy and focuses on the whole. The book respects the heritages of IS/LM (Keynes) and neoclassical growth (Solow) not out of economic respect but because these tools are very useful in understanding the crisis and the policy response to that crisis.

We estimate trends in global earnings dispersion
across occupational groups using a new database covering 66 developed and
developing countries between 1970 and 2015. Our main finding is that global
earnings inequality has declined, primarily during the 2000s, when the global
Gini coefficient dropped nearly 10 points and the earnings share of the world's
poorest half doubled. Decomposition analyses emphasize the role of income
convergence between poor and rich countries and that earnings have become more similar
within occupations in traded industries. Sensitivity checks show that the
results are robust to varying real exchange rates, inequality measures and
population definitions.